[Music begins to play over an image of a woman holding up a photograph of her son.]
Debbie Deem, Victim Specialist, FBI, Los Angeles: Without victims speaking out, we wouldn't have a victims' movement.
William Petty: Every victim has a lesson to teach us as victim service providers. Those voices, those messages, those legacies are forever a part of us.
Kathryn Turman: We're just seeing an explosion of agencies and organizations that have incorporated victim assistance into their operations. If we're going to—as a field—move forward, we have to be willing to address the challenges that are here now and that are coming in the future.
[Music transitions from opening sequence to first victims' stories.]
Abraham Scott, crime victim: Before 9/11, I just couldn't even imagine something like that occurring in my life. When it did happen, I thought it was just a segment out of a movie. It was not real. Matter of fact, I still think that—that my wife will talk through that door any moment now.
Kathryn Turman: Every time somebody talks about 9/11, every time those things are shown, it is, for those families, it's like watching their loved ones die over and over again, and it prolongs and exacerbates everything that these families have to go through.
[Abraham Scott lays a wreath at his wife's grave site.]
Abraham Scott: Happy anniversary, honey.
Abraham Scott: After I learned that they were going to allow family members to be able to watch the trial on closed circuit, I jumped—immediately jumped on the bandwagon. A strange thing happened the day that Judge Brinkema sentenced Mr. Moussaoui. Judge Brinkema asked if the family members would like to say something. Of course we all volunteered. That really made my day when, number one, I was able to sit in the courtroom, and two, had the opportunity to say something to him.
Kathryn Turman: My greatest teachers have been the victims I've worked with. When I graduated from college, I would never have imagined I would be working with victims of terrorism, child pornography on the Internet, financial crimes that involve millions.
Margaret Kuhn, crime victim: With financial crime, you don't see the bruises. When this first happened, I absolutely considered suicide.
Debbie Deem: Financial crime can be just as serious as far as the devastating impact on their families and selves, long and short term, just as much as violent crimes.
Stephen Kuhn, crime victim: I remember Margaret just screaming. The two of us were just crying our eyes out and now knowing how to react.
Margaret Kuhn: We've lost our pensions. We're about to lose our home. It was everything we had.
Stephen Kuhn: And you can't replace it. There's not too many jobs around for guys at 70 years of age these days.
[Debbie Deem speaks with the Kuhns in their kitchen.]
Debbie Deem: You're not alone in going through something like that.
Debbie Deem: It's important to reach those who don't feel they have a voice, or for those like victims of financial crime, who don't feel that there is that safety net that's available for them.
[Music signals transition to next victim's story.]
Valerie Wilson, crime victim: My mom drank. My mom was an alcoholic. It was in the early 80's and there was a lot of prostitution in Minneapolis. We lived right where the girls worked. So it was like, right there outside my door. This one guy paid a lot of attention to me. It went from him pretending he was my boyfriend to, you know, let's go, we're going for a ride. I just remember hearing where I was, someone saying in Chicago. They had me chained up in the basement. Then they brought guys down there to have sex with me, and I guess they made money off of it. From then out, I was one of them women that I used to see out on the street.
William Petty: In its broadest sense, the way that I look at underserved and unserved communities and population are those who live in silence. It's not just that the help doesn't exist. There's a barrier, whether it is agency imposed, culturally imposed, or self-imposed.
Valerie Wilson: There's so many native girls that are going through what I went through and don't have to go through that.
[Music transitions to closing sequence.]
William Petty: The best tribute to those victims who have experienced trauma and tragedy is to learn what they taught us and to fold that into how we do business tomorrow.
Kathryn Turman: Being willing to reshape and rethink the way we do things is absolutely critical to survival and absolutely critical to being relevant to victims.
William Petty: Building on the past to shape the future, that's exactly what we're called and have to do.
[Graphics on screen: Reshaping the Future. Honoring the Past.]
